


Personal Cold War

by raving_liberal



Series: Call Sign [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adoption, American Sign Language, Avengers Stuff, Child Soldiers, Conflict, Dog Cops, F/M, Family Dinners, HOH!Clint, Hard Of Hearing Hawkeye, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, M/M, Maybe Natasha Just Really Likes Birds Ok?, Mighty Girl Squad, Multi, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3 Compliant, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Pain Scale, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Steve Rogers, Relationship(s), Sam Wilson is a Gift, Surprise Bad Guy, Team Dynamics, Used As A Tool For Team Assessment, Waffles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-16 17:45:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5834887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raving_liberal/pseuds/raving_liberal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve feels the tension mounting in his home and with his team. Bucky comes and goes with the unpredictability of an alleycat, Kat would rather play with knives than Legos, and Natasha still has no idea that Kat is—maybe, possibly—the baby she left in Budapest after a failed mission. On top of that, Sam is now possibly romantically involved with both Nat <i>and</i> Clint Barton, but never thought he should mention that to his friend Steve. A run in with a Hydra operative almost feels like a welcome break until Steve learns the operative’s mission: gather intelligence on Kat for retrieval by a newly-emerging Hydra cell. Now Steve has a new crop of problems to deal with. Can he keep Kat safe from Hydra? Can he <i>really</i> trust Bucky? More importantly, can they all convince Kat that she doesn’t actually need a superhero uniform?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shopping for Super Soldiers

They never seem to have enough food. Steve remembers that feeling from growing up in Brooklyn in the 30s, but now they have a distinctly affluent 21st century solution to an empty pantry. The daily ritual of placing a QuickFresh delivery order with J.A.R.V.I.S. keeps them barely ahead of Kat’s appetite. Kat puts on weight and height, getting sturdier as she shoots up a few inches, and they’re not hurting for money, so Steve doesn’t question the pile of discarded banana peels from the bunch they just had delivered that morning or the absence of the half a roasted chicken he was sure he’d put into the fridge last night. He’s just glad Kat doesn’t feel like she has to ask for permission before polishing off half a leftover pizza from lunch with Barton or eating the rest of Sam’s carton of lo mein. 

While Kat’s becoming more substantial, Bucky remains as ghostly a presence as ever. He could stick around for a week at a stretch or show up for fifteen minutes to shout at Steve in Russian, eat a bagel, and then disappear again for days without any word. Steve wants to believe Bucky’s getting better, but he isn’t sure if that’s based on anything actually observable or just wishful thinking on his part. Even when Bucky _is_ around, his behavior isn’t exactly consistent. Some days he lavishes Kat with attention, carrying on animated conversations in a mix of English, Hungarian, Russian, and what Steve thinks might be Farsi. Other days, all he does is sit on Steve’s reproduction 1930s-era sofa and binge-watch cooking programs or a television show that seems—to Steve’s great confusion—to be about dogs that are cops. 

Sometimes Kat watches the cop-dog show with Bucky, and they eat popcorn or dry cereal from the huge plastic bowl Kat found on the top shelf of one of the cabinets and which is now designated ‘Kat’s snack bowl’. Steve doesn’t join them, partly because he thinks Kat and Bucky need the time together, and partly because Kat yells at him when he asks questions about the characters or plot of the cop-dog show. He tries to use the time to work on other things, like mapping out their plans for the remaining Hydra bases with Sam, practicing his signing (with J.A.R.V.I.S.’s assistance), or maintaining the Avengers’ equipment. Even in the twenty-first century, boots don’t polish themselves, guns don’t clean themselves, magazines don’t reload themselves.

Bucky’s boots could use a polish, but he never takes them off. When he stays at the apartment overnight he sleep in his boots, fully clothed and laid out stiff and straight on the sofa with his hands on his chest, the left resting on top of the right. Steve knows that if something wakes Bucky in the night, those hands will be on a pair of throwing knives, and then the knives will be in Bucky’s target. Kat doesn't seem particularly concerned by this; Steve and Sam announce their presence from the hallway, out of the line of fire.

This morning is the type Steve would call middling-fair. A mostly-taciturn Bucky seems content to watch Kat’s sign language show, though he does so without direct engagement with Kat. Whatever dark cloud hangs over Bucky’s head, Kat must feel as well, because her signing show usually garners more enthusiasm. Today, she still follows along, but her movements are precise and robotic. Kis Katona is expanding her signing vocabulary today, and the Winter Soldier watches her in silent judgment.

Steve’s phone—the landline that came with the apartment—rings, meaning only Sam or Nat. The care providers at Peggy’s nursing home know to call Steve’s cell. Stark and Pepper usually contact him via J.A.R.V.I.S., and Clint tends to show up on his doorstep with Crackerjacks or a bag of cotton candy or a new box of hideously-colored cereal. Nat is supposedly out of the country, so—

“Hi, Sam,” Steve says when he answers the phone.

“Did you learn to use the caller ID finally?” Sam asks.

“Nope. Process of elimination,” Steve says. 

“How many on premises?”

“All three accounted for.”

“Want to pain scale for me?” Sam asks, since the ridiculous faces from the medical floor work better as their shared-language Bucky-to-Winter-Soldier scale than as a means of identifying Steve’s level of pain. The chart doesn't really go high enough to measure the pain Steve can take, anyway. 

“Grimace, closer to the frown side,” Steve says. 

“And Kat?” 

“Neutral face, with the straight line for a mouth.”

“Mmhmm,” Sam says. “And what about Steve?”

“Steve’s the big smiley. Can’t you tell?” Steve says.

“Yeah, so huge, that smile,” Sam says.

“What do you need, Sam?”

“I need you to agree to dinner.”

“‘You’ meaning just me?” Steve asks.

“Whole crew, Bucky included,” says Sam.

“Sam, you know I’d love t—”

“Natasha planned it.

“Oh,” Steve says. Different rules for Nat. “Okay. We’ll be there. Your place?”

“You know she’s only got the keys to my place and not vice versa, so yeah, my place,” Sam says. “Tomorrow night at six. Disarmament encouraged, but not required.”

“I’ll be sure to tell my own personal Cold War that,” Steve says wryly.

“Give Kat a hug from me.”

“I’ll definitely do that, because she enjoys hugs so much.”

“And your pal, too,” Sam says.

“He enjoys hugs even more than Kat,” Steve says. “We’ll see you tomorrow night, Sam.”

“You know I’m literally right across the hall, and you could see me before tomorrow night, right? We could go for a run, grab a cup of coffee, something like that,” Sam says. “The building’s secure. You don’t have to watch over them all the time.”

“You know you can just tell me you miss me, right?” Steve says, which makes Sam laugh at him.

“Okay, I acknowledge that all that sounded a little needy,” Sam says, “but the offer stands.”

Steve sighs. Kat’s signing show still drones on in the background. “I know. I’m just not ready to take a chance on them not being here when I get back. We both know he could get her out of the building before we could make it back here, even if Jarvis called me right away.”

“Have either of them said or done anything to make you think that’s a real risk?” Sam asks.

“Not in English,” Steve says. “I don’t want to lose them, Sam.”

“I get it. They’re your family. You’re still allowed to have a life, man,” Sam says. “Think about it. Maybe we can plan something for next week and ease you into it.”

“Yeah, I’ll think about it. We’ll see you tomorrow night,” Steve says. He hangs up the phone. When he turns around, Kat is standing behind him, still and silent. “Hi, Kat. Did you and Bucky finish watching your show?”

Kat tips her head slightly to the side, something she does when she’s mentally translating and processing English. “You talk Sam?” she finally asks. 

“Yeah, Sam wants us to come to dinner,” Steve says.

“Food. Yes. We go,” Kat says, reaching for Steve’s hand.

“Tomorrow,” Steve says. “Tomorrow night with him and Natasha.”

“Also Cleent,” Kat states.

“Well, Sam didn’t anything about Clint, just that it was Natasha’s idea. You, me, and Bucky, we’re all invited.”

Kat tips her head slightly to the other side, eyes narrowing. “Sam, Natasha, Cleent, all—” She puts her fists together, heels of her palms touching, and makes a tight circular motion with them. 

“Together?” Steve asks.

“Yes. Together,” Kat says, repeating the sign as she says it.

“We’re all together. Part of the same team. Is that what you mean?” Steve asks. Kat shakes her head.

“Natasha likes bird-mans,” Kat says. “Cleent and Sam, they are bird-mans. They are for Natasha.”

“I don’t— Kat, I don’t think I understand what you mean,” Steve says.

“She means they’re fucking,” Bucky says from the kitchen doorway, where he apparently silently slunk and is now too-casually leaning. 

“Yes,” Kat agrees. “That.”

“Buck! Don’t say that in front of her!” Steve says, glancing up at Bucky in alarm. 

Bucky shrugs. “It’s true.”

“Yes. True,” Kat says, signing ‘together’ again, with a look on her face like ‘see? told you so’. 

“First of all, we are _not_ talking about this, and second of all, _no_ ,” Steve says. 

Bucky shrugs again. “Ask the Widow yourself.”

“I’ll just not do that, and we’ll stop talking about it now,” Steve says. “Whatever you think is going on, it’s none of our business, and we’re not going to make it our business!”

Kat mutters something to Bucky that Steve doesn’t quite catch, but suspects is along the lines of “everything is my business,” since Bucky nods his agreement. Kat then gives Steve a big, cheesy grin and wanders out of the kitchen in the direction of her bedroom. Bucky keeps watching Steve with a look of mild amusement on his face.

“Fine,” Steve says. “I know what you want.”

“What do I want, Stevie?”

“You want me to ask if it’s true.”

“Oh, do I, now?” Bucky says. There’s a note of the old charm in his voice, which Steve doesn’t think is particularly fair, considering all he’s gotten out of Bucky the last few days is a few non-committal grunts and nods. 

“Yeah, you do, and you know you do,” Steve says. “So alright. Fine. Is it true?”

“Wouldn’t _you_ like to know?” Bucky says, casually turning and strolling out of the kitchen in the same direction Kat went. 

“I wouldn’t!” Steve calls after him. Bucky doesn’t reply, so Steve just shakes his head. He really wouldn’t… mostly.


	2. Assassination Tea Party

They have cake for dinner, because Kat wanted cake. In fact, Kat wanted cake so much that she apparently ordered up a cake on her own, via J.A.R.V.I.S., and it arrives right as Steve is trying to decide what he could assemble for dinner, because they _cannot eat Chinese take-out again this week, Buck!_ Kat streaks down the hallway from her bedroom to the door at the first knock from the delivery man. Before Steve makes it out of the kitchen, Kat marches in with the bakery box in her arms, holding it proudly aloft.

“Dinner,” she announces. “I get.”

“Kat, that looks an awful lot like a bakery cake,” Steve says.

“Yes. Cake. I get,” Kat repeats.

“We had this talk, remember? Cake isn’t a meal food. Cake’s a dessert food,” Steve says, as Kat places the bakery box in the center of the table and begins pulling plates from the cabinet, ignoring Steve entirely. Bucky saunters into the kitchen.

“The cake got here,” he says

“You knew about this cake?” Steve demands, gesturing at the table.

“My friend like cake dinner, also,” Kat says. “ _Csokoládé._ I get for us.”

“C’mon, you can’t argue with chocolate cake, Stevie,” Bucky says, pulling a chair out for Steve all gallant-like. “You love chocolate. Remember how you used to trade with the other guys for their D ration bars, and that stuff tasted like shit.”

“It wasn’t about the chocolate. I have an elevated caloric need!” Steve protests.

“Then eat a stick of butter, pal,” Bucky says, “but don’t try to spin me any ‘wasn’t about the chocolate’ shit.”

“No shit. Only cake,” Kat says. Her tone effectively puts a stop to the continuation of a 70-year-old argument, the last round of which had probably happened about a week before the train. If somebody had asked Steve a few months ago who won that argument, he’d have said Bucky out of respect. When the object of said respect is living, breathing, and helping the world’s sneakiest 6-year-old con Steve into cake for dinner, well… there’s respect and then there's _respect_.

“Fine, we’ll eat the cake, but we’re bringing a salad to Sam’s for dinner,” Steve says firmly. 

“We bring,” Kat agrees.

“And you and Buck are both eating some, tomatoes and all,” Steve says. Kat scowls. Bucky barely—but only just—out-glares her.

The cake-eating is a mostly silent affair. Steve makes a few attempts at conversation, but after Kat tries to answer with a mouthful of cake still crammed into her cheeks, spraying the table with damp crumbs, Steve imposes a mental moratorium on talking. Bucky eats his cake in the same swift, efficient, and mechanical fashion as he does most things these days. The cake could stand to be a little more moist. Steve contemplates trying to teach Kat how to bake before reminding himself she’s only six, give or take. 

After the cake is gone, Steve says, “Hey Kat, you should go play for a little while.”

Kat looks at Bucky, who nods, before glancing back at Steve. “Yes. I play.”

She scampers off. Steve washes the dishes. When everything is in the rack drying, he looks around for Bucky. Surprise, surprise, Bucky isn’t there. Steve dries his hands with a kitchen towel as he walks down the hallway towards Kat’s room. He doesn’t want to interrupt, so he leans in the hallway, Kat and Bucky just barely in sight. Bucky sits on Kat’s bed, apparently overseeing playtime, which seems to be taking place in a combination of Hungarian, Russian, and another language, and which involves several of Kat’s new dolls seating around a long table made from Lego blocks. 

As part of the ‘teach Kat to be a normal kid’ project, Pepper showed up one afternoon with a stack of boxes, each containing a roughly ten-inch-tall doll dressed in vaguely-familiar-looking costumes. Pepper explained they were Mighty Girl Squad dolls, and each character has a special and unique skill. Steve has since learned there’s also a show about these girls, who are all apparently teenage superheroes not-so-subtly inspired by the Avengers, and he’s been having J.A.R.V.I.S. screen the episodes for anything particularly violent that might trigger Kat’s currently dormant super soldier skillset. J.A.R.V.I.S. finds the science and tech borderline questionable in its accuracy, but so far the Mighty Girl Squad seem to solve most of their problems with diplomacy, brainpower, and moxie. 

Kat lies on her stomach on the floor with a Mighty Girl in each hand. Tech Girl (brunette, dressed in a red and pink exo-suit) and Secret Girl (redhead, black catsuit) appear to be having a vigorous, yet hushed, discussion in Russian, possibly to keep the information from pearlescent-skinned Valkyrie Girl and metal-winged Sky Girl. Bucky has Marvelous Girl in his metal hand, occasionally saying something in the third language. 

“Jarvis, what language is Bucky speaking?” Steve asks quietly.

“He is speaking Urdu, Captain,” J.A.R.V.I.S. answers. “He and Miss Kat initially had some debate over whether Marvelous Girl should speak Urdu, Punjabi, or Pashto. Miss Kat made a strong argument for Pashto, but Sergeant Barnes stated that as the individual currently voicing Marvelous Girl, he was making a judgment call, and Urdu it is.”

“They look like they’re having a good time,” Steve says, feeling himself smile as he watches Kat make her two dolls talk to each other, her little red eyebrows knit together in intense concentration.

J.A.R.V.I.S responds. “Yes, Captain. This mission has proceeded _very_ well. Secret Girl has just notified Tech Girl that she has completed her primary objective, and Valkyrie Girl shall soon succumb to the poison in her okroshka.” 

Steve’s eyes narrow. “Wait, her dolls are _assassinating_ each other?”

“Yes, Captain,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says. “The plot is really quite riveting. If Sky Girl becomes suspicious, Marvelous Girl intends to garotte her and extract Secret Girl from the presidential palace.”

“That’s horrible!” Steve says, fighting to keep his volume down so he doesn’t interrupt Kat and Bucky’s apparently morbid game of dolls. “Is this what she usually does?”

“The Mighty Girl Squad’s missions vary, Captain, but assassination is typically the primary objective. Sometimes the assassinations are less subtle. On Saturday, Marvelous Girl and Secret Girl used plastic explosives to blow up Science Girl’s automobile.”

“Plastic explosives?” Steve ask, feeling gut-punched.

“Represented by Play-Doh, Captain,” J.A.R.V.I.S. say. 

Kat flicks Valkyrie Girl in the side of the head, and the pearlescent doll topples over, accompanied by a gruesome, strangled sound-effect from Kat. Secret Girl seems pleased as she leaves Tech Girl behind and climbs the bed to rendezvous with Marvelous Girl. Marvelous Girl and Secret Girl have a long conversation in Urdu, then at the very end of it, Secret Girl says, in very Kat-like English, “Cap never need to know.”

“That’s why Cap’s up on the shelf, kid,” Marvelous Girl says, also in English, specifically in Bucky’s most-Brooklyn-accent English. 

Steve glances up at Kat’s bookshelf, and sure enough, Captain Girl remains in her red, white, and blue packaging, stashed on the top shelf. Steve sighs. 

“They don’t like Captain Girl?” he asks J.A.R.V.I.S.

“Keeping Captain Girl safe is the primary directive,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says. “Marvelous Girl and Secret Girl both agreed. To quote Sergeant Barnes as Marvelous Girl, ‘We get our hands dirty so the Captain doesn’t have to’.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says, running one hand over his face. “They’re not even playing. They’re just acting out the past. Mine and Bucky’s, hers and his. This wasn’t what I wanted. I just want her to be a kid.” 

“Kat is making remarkable progress, Captain. Her English has improved significantly, as has her ASL. Her interactions with other members of your team indicate increased trust, even cameraderie. She hasn’t replaced the shiv you removed from under her mattress a week ago,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says. 

Steve knows that’s supposed to be comforting, but he doesn’t feel comforted. He doesn't just want to disarm her. He wants to undo the damage Hydra did to her. This—Kat acting out what may have been real missions she was assigned to with Bucky—makes Steve feel sick, not hopeful. He wants to sink to the floor, crawl to the bathroom, and divest himself of his chocolate cake dinner.

“I just want her to be a kid,” Steve repeats sadly. 

“We all want things, pal,” Bucky says. Steve looks into Kat’s room again. Bucky isn’t looking in Steve’s direction, only at Kat and her dolls, and he still seems to be talking as Marvelous Girl, but Steve knows Bucky’s really speaking to him. It’s the tone, the words: Steve knows when he’s being handled, and what Bucky sounds like when he’s doing the handling. “Sometimes we’ve just got to be satisfied with what we can get.”

Steve laughs once, knowing how bitter it sounds. “All I wanted was to make everything okay for you,” he says, voice just above a whisper, trusting Bucky will hear him.

“‘Okay’ isn't the objective. Sure as hell ain't the directive,” Bucky says.

Steve closes his eyes, slumping back against the wall. Kat is playing, alright, but she’s playing at _playing_. Worse, Bucky knows and is helping her. Even though he doesn't want to think it, doesn't want to even consider it, Steve can't shake the nagging thought that all of it—finding Kat, helping her, Bucky coming in on his own—is just more play-acting. Steve can't even do a gut check on this one, because detachment from the situation never has been something he had where Bucky’s concerned. Now, with Kat, that internal barometer is even more shot to hell. 

“Just let me know if they start saying anything that might be real-world dangerous to themselves or someone else,” Steve tells J.A.R.V.I.S. 

“Of course, sir,” the AI says, managing to sound both entirely polite and deeply offended.

“Thanks, Jarvis,” Steve says. He pushes himself off the wall and walks the few steps to his bedroom. “Remind them when it’s bedtime, will you?”

“Of course, Captain Rogers.”

“Goodnight, Jarvis,” Steve says, shucking off his pants and climbing into bed in just his t-shirt and undershorts.

“Goodnight to you as well, Captain,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says.


	3. Pre-Dinner Extraction

The phone rings while the three of them are in the kitchen, Bucky and Kat seated at the table together slicing vegetables into uncomfortably tiny, uniform pieces. Steve steps away from the sink, where he’s rinsing lettuce, to answer the phone, balancing it between his ear and shoulder.

“Hello?”

“Steve?” Nat’s voice—Steve thinks it’s Nat, anyway—seems to be coming from far away, over a lot of static and what might be the whir of helicopters. 

“Nat?”

“Steve,” Nat repeats. “We need to push dinner back a little.” Something booms in the background, possibly an explosion.

“Natasha? Where _are_ you?” Steve asks. 

“1900 hours, maybe 1930,” Nat says. 

“What’s happening?” Steve asks. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

After a cascading series of increasingly-closer booms, “Could be more like 2000. If it’s going to be any later, Sam will call.”

“Nat, I’m a little concerned right now,” Steve says. 

The line crackles with more static and then goes quiet. Steve thinks the line might be dead until it crackles again, and Nat says, “Sam says tell your personal Cold War easy on the red onions,” then the line _does_ go dead. 

Steve ends up holding the phone out and staring at it for long enough that Kat pipes up with a helpful, “Phone goes on wall.” 

Steve returns the phone to the base screwed into the wall. “Thanks, Kat.” Kat, for her part, has already turned her attention back to her knife. 

“Why’d they even give you that phone, Stevie?” Bucky asks without looking up from carrot he’s matchsticking perfectly. “That’s ancient technology.”

“Stark had them installed in all the apartments on this floor when they were built. He said he thought I would feel more comfortable with a ‘real phone’ in the place,” Steve says, making the air quotes like Stark had when he’d explained it to Steve. 

“Don’t make air quotes, pal.”

“How’d you know I was making air quotes?” Steve asks. “You didn’t even look at me.”

“I heard ‘em,” Bucky says.

“Yes,” Kat agrees. “I also hear.”

“You can’t hear air quotes. That’s the point,” Steve says.

“Yeah, you really can,” Bucky says.

“ _Shish-shish_ ,” Kat says, making air quotes along with her sound effect. 

“What’d the Widow want, anyway?” Bucky asks. He uses his metal hand to brush the carrots into a bowl. 

“Dinner’s been delayed by an hour, possibly more,” Steve says.

“Extraction ran over?” Bucky says. “Typical.”

“Extrac— _what_ extraction?” Steve asks. “There was an extraction?”

Kat looks up, and Steve can’t quite tell if her expression is derisive, pitying, or a mixture of both. She snorts quietly and looks back down at her paper-thin mushroom slices, muttering something to herself in Hungarian. 

“Exactly,” Bucky says to her. 

Steve wants to say that he’s about half-sick of the muttering and the whispering. He’s wants to say he’s had it with the way the two of them keep secrets and act like he doesn’t know what’s going on. Instead he huffs loudly and returns to his thorough, if now slightly more aggressive, washing of a perfectly innocent head of lettuce that never hurt anybody. Maybe he’ll just pretend it’s Hydra-ponic lettuce, not _hydroponic_ lettuce. 

“Whatcha snickering to yourself about?” Bucky asks.

“Nothing,” Steve says. “Lettuce humor.”

“Leaf alone,” Kat says solemnly. Steve and Bucky both stare at her. Her face looks serious, but after a few beats, she cracks a grin. “I make food joke.”

“You sure did,” Steve says, laughing and shaking his head. 

“I am so funny,” Kat says, carefully pronouncing each word, accompanying them with quick a two-finger touch to the tip of her nose, snapped down into a sideways thumbs-up. 

“Yeah, you are,” Steve agrees. He holds out his fist for Kat to bump, and she obliges, with perhaps a little more force than she would with Barton. Bucky rolls his eyes at them, which just serves the purpose of making Steve want to fistbump everyone, all the time, slowly and deliberately, within Bucky’s line of sight. 

A few hours later, when now follow-up call from Sam has come, Steve puts a lid on the assembled salad and hands Kat a bag with an assortment of salad dressings—salad dressings being arguably worthy of a place on the list of “Great Things About the Future”—and they all three pile into the hall in front of Sam’s apartment door. When Steve knocks, Barton answers. He smells like burning plastic and part of his hair looks singed. 

Barton smiles at Kat and exchanges some signs with her before he says, “Hey, come in,” to Steve and Bucky. Kat signs back rapidly—Steve catches ‘smell’, ‘fire’, ‘stupid’, and an assortment of swear words—and seems to be scolding Barton, either for his involvement in whatever extraction Kat and Bucky had been discussing or for not being, in Kat-terms, proficient enough. 

“Everybody in one piece?” Steve asks. Nat’s and Sam’s gear is lying on the floor near the front door, Barton’s bow and quiver propped against the wall. Kat gives all the gear a thorough inspection and signs a few more swears at Barton, with a crisply pronounced “Idiot!” at the end.

Barton nods emphatically. “Tasha’s in the shower, Sam’s in the—oh, hey, Sam.” 

Sam pops out of the kitchen. He definitely looks the worse for wear, butterfly tape holding together a deep cut over his left eye, his right arm in a sling.

“ _Sam_ ,” Steve says, feeling helpless and frustrated. Sam just shakes his head.

“Don't,” Sam say. “Not after the shit I’ve seen you pull.”

“Yeah, but that's me,” Steve protests. 

“Yeah, and I’m apparently just as big a dumbass as you,” Sam says.

“Don't listen to him,” Nat say, entering the kitchen with her hair still wrapped in a towel. Her pants look comfortable and like they belong to Barton. Her shirt looks equally comfortable and like it belongs to Sam. “Nobody’s as big a dumbass as Steve. Hi, Steve.” She turns her face up, surprising Steve with a soft peck to his cheek. 

“Hi,” Steve says, startled enough not to argue with her.

“It was all planned. The extraction went off without a hitch,” Nat continues. Her tone is even, mollifying, but Steve doesn't feel like being mollified. In fact, he’s had it with the secrets and the tiptoeing, and, he can admit, Natasha is a safer outlet than Bucky, and a more appropriate outlet than Kat.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Steve demands. “If you're part of this team, you need to start acting like it, not going off and doing whatever the hell you want without—”

Nat pats his cheek, then turns towards Sam, carefully laying her head on his shoulder. “We discussed it as a team,” she tells him. “As a team, we decided this particular…” She rolls her eyes up to the ceiling, searching for a word, then looks back at Steve, leveling a brilliant smile at him. “ _Expedition_ didn't require your particular skillset.”

“I don't appreciate being benched without a conversation first,” Steve says.

“Consider this the conversation, then. You're emotionally compromised on this topic. We couldn't send you in there,” Nat says.

“Bucky?” Steve asks quietly. Bucky, Kat, and Barton seem to have moved from the hall to the living room. The cop-dog show theme song starts up. Bucky and Kat are probably both still listening.

Nat shakes her head. “The girl.”

“You found something about Kat?” Steve asks. “What? Medical records?”

Nat shakes her head again. “It’s not past, it’s present. The memos were dated from three weeks ago to four days ago.”

“Dammit, Nat, this isn't the kind of thing to keep from me!” Steve says.

Sam raises his good hand, signaling Steve to shut it. “It’s exactly the kind of thing to keep from you, until we were sure what kind of intel we were after and how good it was.”

Steve bites back a retort, forcing himself to take a breath. “How good was it?”

“Good,” Nat says bluntly, “but we’re having dinner first, like normal people. Isn't that what you're trying to do for the girl? Give her something normal.”

“None of this is normal,” Steve say, but he doesn't protest when Nat takes him by the shoulders and steers him out of the kitchen. 

“We’ll talk about it after,” Nat promises.

“Yeah. We will,” Steve says. Nat rolls her eyes at his tone, giving him a gentle shove into the living room. Kat is perched on the edge of the sofa, pressed against Barton’s leg as she stares intently at the television. Buck stands next to the sofa, seemingly focused on the screen, but Steve can tell from his body language that he’s adopted a defensive position. If anyone were to come into the apartment now, Steve is certain Kat at least would be leaving alive and in Bucky’s care.

Kat glances up at Steve, gesturing at the television. “Dog Cop Rufus stop much terrorists,” she says. “He is good dog.”

“He’s the German Shepherd?” Steve asks.

“No. He is red dog,” Kat says, touching her own hair, as if Steve didn’t know what the color red looked like. “Rufus mean red.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Steve says. Barton slides over on the sofa, bumping Kat all the way toward the arm, and pats the cushion next to him. Steve sits. “So, what’s the German Shepherd’s name?”

Without looking at Steve again, Kat says, “Shh. No talk. Watch _Dog Cops_.”

“Sorry,” Steve says quietly.

They watch the rest of episode in silence, with the exception of a few excited whoops from Kat and Barton when the cop dogs do something particularly heroic. When it’s over, Barton turns off the television, and he and Kat set the table together. Kat gives the knives a longing look as Barton sets them at each place setting, but she doesn’t try to pocket one, at least. 

Nat comes out of the kitchen with a fantastic-smelling roast chicken, Sam behind her, carrying a platter of roasted vegetables in his good hand. Steve gets the salad and dressings. Kat disappears and then emerges from somewhere with a basket of yeasty rolls. Bucky leans against a wall, lurking and being generally unhelpful. Everyone sits around the table, passing bowls around and loading up their plates. Steve’s heart feels full, despite the anticipated post-dinner conversation. This feeling lasts until Kat reaches across the table and steals Steve’s roll with a pleased look on her face that makes Bucky snicker, which in turn prompts Kat to shove the entire roll in her mouth at once.

Steve points at Kat and then at Bucky. “You two are the worst? Did you know that?”

“Yes,” Kat says through her mouthful of roll. “We know.”

“Everyone at this table knows they’re the worst,” Sam agrees.

“Also best,” Kat adds. Bucky snickers again. Steve steals his roll.


	4. Bones and White Noise

Dinner is over, plates scraped clean save for the chicken bones, several of which have Kat’s teeth marks in them. Barton magically produces an angel food cake, a bowl of strawberries in syrup, and a can of Redi-Whip. After physically wrestling the Redi-Whip canister from Kat’s hands, Barton divvies up the cake and passes around the strawberries and the whipped cream. Somehow—Steve suspects by mutual sinister design between Barton and Kat—everything makes its way back around to Kat a second time, at which point she dumps her cake into the serving bowl of strawberries and sprays all the remaining Redi-Whip on top. 

“Kid sure can eat,” Sam says, a note of admiration in his voice.

“All food I reach is for me,” Kat declares. “I reach this all.” She gestures expansively at her serving bowl, then raises an eyebrow at Barton and aggressively signs ‘mine!’ at him. Barton laughs, shaking his head a little as he eats his own dessert. 

The space around them seems relaxed, everyone but Bucky at ease. Barton and Natasha obviously feel at home here, which gives some credence to Kat and Bucky's theory about their relationships with Sam. Even though Sam is injured and clearly in some degree of discomfort, he looks happy, maybe even content. The dynamics of a three-person relationship strike Steve as potentially being fairly complicated, but it’s not like some part of him hadn't entertained a fantasy or two about having something like that with Peggy and Bucky decades ago. That sort of thing wasn't really done then, or at least never talked about where Steve could hear it, but he’d thought about it nonetheless. Steve never got the chance to get very far in even a two-person relationship with either of them, though, so in the end he’d come to terms with all of that being left behind in the past and the ice.

“You’re drifting.” Nat’s voice pulls him away from his navel-gazing.

“Just thinking about how nice this is,” Steve says. He makes the same all-encompassing gesture that Kat had made about her bowl of strawberries, cake, and Redi-Whip. It _is_ nice, all of it, even Bucky’s blank-faced food-shoveling. This isn't a bad family that he’s found here.

“You’re sweet,” Nat says, in a voice suggesting she doesn't quite believe him, but won't call him on it either.

“How’s the arm?” Steve asks Sam.

“Not too bad,” Sam says. “Had worse.” 

“What he isn't telling you is that he dislocated that shoulder catching Clint from a freefall mid-air,” Nat says. She puts her hand on Sam’s elbow, both proud and possessive. 

“My hero,” Barton says and signs. He’s striving for deadpan, Steve can tell, but a barely-noticeable quaver in his voice and tremor in his hands suggests there's more truth to what he’s saying than he’d like to admit. There's more than gratitude there.

“This is the part where I’m supposed to say ‘aw shucks’ and act like it was no big deal, right?” Sam asks. His eyes are soft when he looks at Barton; Kat and Bucky were definitely onto something.

“Ask Steve how he feels about false modesty,” Nat says, gently prodding Sam’s elbow. “We all made it out because Sam is competent at what he does and has better perspective than some of us.”

“Meaning Barton or meaning me?” Steve asks.

“How do you know I’m not talking about myself?” Nat replies, smiling her enigmatic little spy-smile, the one that makes her real smile seem like a special gift she's giving someone – usually Sam or Barton, but Steve often enough, and the rest of the team on occasion.

“Because _you_ are what Kat would call a ‘proficient asset’,” Steve says, mimicking Kat’s speech pattern. Kat grins. Her mouth has strawberry sauce around it, making her look like a small, enthusiastic vampire.

“Natasha is much proficient asset,” Kat declares. “Bird-mans, too, but much more Natasha.”

“See?” Steve says. “You’ve been endorsed by Kat. That's high praise.”

Nat’s smile gets thinner and more strained. “Thank you, Kat,” she says, never really looking at her directly.

“You’re welcomes,” Kat says. She runs her fingers around the inside of her now-empty bowl for the remaining sauce and whipped cream. She signs ‘more cake’ at Barton with a questioning expression, then sighs and makes a great show of looking dejected when he signs back ‘you ate it all’. “You are _worst_ , Cleent.”

“So they keep telling me,” Barton says. 

“So,” Steve says, looking around the table. “We ready to talk?”

Nat’s mouth tightens into a thin line, though the rest of her face remains still. Barton glances at her, then at Sam, and then at Kat before looking in Steve’s direction. Sam nods once, tensing.

“Hey Kat,” Sam says. “I think somebody left a couple boxes for you under the couch. You want to go check ‘em out?”

The look Kat gives Sam says everything about how fooled she is by his obvious ruse, but the prospect of presents apparently overrides her curiosity about the adults’ conversation, because she stands and then darts into the living room. Steve hears her excited exclamation at whatever she finds. He smiles to himself before nodding at Sam to proceed. Sam gives Bucky a pointed sidelong look.

“Sam,” Steve says gently.

“I didn’t say anything about that,” Sam says. Sam doesn't trust Bucky yet, not fully, and Steve can't find it in his heart to blame him for that. Sam has more than exceeded the limits of patience and compassion Steve would expect from a friend, but he’s not a fool and his point of view on the matter of Bucky isn't clouded by blind loyalty or love like Steve’s. Steve respects it. Even more, he knows he needs it. Sam is Steve’s barometer, just like Nat is his compass. Nat keeps him pointed in the right direction; Sam is the one who calls him out when the pressure’s on and Steve is too sunk by the weight of it to notice.

“Hey, Buck?” Steve asks. God, he feels guilty not trusting Bucky. He wants to. Bucky raises his eyebrows and grunts an acknowledgment. “Would you mind keeping Kat company?”

Bucky’s expression doesn't change much, but he nods his agreement and joins Kat in the other room. Steve doesn't try to delude himself that both of them won't be listening. Natasha must be thinking the same thing, reaching behind her for the device Steve had assumed was some kind of radio. It emits a soothing static.

“White noise machine,” she explains. “Should cut down on the eavesdropping.”

“So it's bad?” Steve asks.

“Well, it ain't good,” Sam answers. “We didn't find as much as we hoped, but what we did find points to the kid. They're looking for her hard. We found some schematics for some kind of holding facility.”

“Jesus,” Steve breathes, running a hand over his face. “What else? There had to be more or you wouldn't have needed Bucky out of the room.”

“It’s nothing concrete to point to him,” Nat says.

“It's nothing concrete to point anywhere else, either,” Sam says, sounding apologetic. “We know there's someone in play, someone in the field, and retrieval’s the primary goal. If your pal’s a sleeper—”

“He could take the girl,” Natasha finishes. “They could walk right out without sounding a single alarm.”

“He wouldn't do that to Kat,” Steve insists.

“Hate to say it, Cap, but we don't really have a way to be sure what he would or wouldn't do,” Barton says, and he sounds apologetic, too. Steve's sick of people sounding apologetic in his direction. It smacks of pity, and he had his fair share of that before the war, before the serum.

“I know he wants to keep her safe,” Steve says stubbornly. “He cares about her. Maybe he still gets confused about other people sometimes, but he loves that girl. He wouldn't give her back to Hydra or anyone else. He’d die first, same as me.”

“It may not be his choice to make,” Nat says. Her voice is gentle, pitched low, and she slides her hand across the table to rest on top of Steve’s. It’s such a small hand, for all it holds all three men in the room completely at its mercy.

“He’s doing better,” Steve says.

“I know,” Nat says. “I can see it. We all do. We just have to prioritize _you_ here, because we know you won't.”

“We won't let Bucky, Kat, _or_ you be in a situation where you could get hurt, not if we can help it,” Sam promises. Steve believes him, knows he doesn't make a promise lightly. Sam’s honest, and more than that, he’s got the brains and the tactical skills to back up that promise. 

“Okay,” Steve says, taking a deep breath. “Okay, so you’ve got intel, schematics. Show me. I want to see it all. I want to know what we might be up against here.”

“It’s ugly,” Barton say, blunt in a way Steve appreciates right now.

“None of this has been pretty. I still need to see it all,” Steve says. He looks at Sam. “Am I wrong?”

“You’re a pain in my ass, is what you are,” Sam says.

“But?” Steve prompts.

“But no, you're not wrong,” Sam concedes. “Jarvis, you want to throw up those schematics?”

“Of course, sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says. 

The dinner table suddenly lights up with a 3d rendering of a building. Steve notes labs, larger spaces with the remains of vehicles and weapons, small square rooms that are likely cells. In the center, visible through the glowing edges of walls, is a chair, surrounded by an arch of machinery. Steve’s stomach turns over.

“Well,” he says.

“Yeah,” Nat says. “Like Clint said, it’s ugly.”

Steve nods. “So they’ve still go access to these facilities and they have someone looking for Kat. That gives us a starting point, at least.”

“Starting point for what?” Nat asks. 

“To find these guys before they find Kat,” Steve says, looking at Natasha,“ _or_ Bucky.”


	5. The One That Stays

Natasha narrows her eyes, the gentle hand on top of Steve’s retreating. “And if we find evidence that Bucky may very well _be_ that guy?” 

“I’ll deal with that when and if it happens,” Steve says.

“Steve, man, you’ve got to admit your perspective on this one may be off,” Sam says, “and I don’t think that looking at that,” he gestures at the chair in the center of the schematic, “is going to help at all. We can’t go into this with some kind of preconceived idea of anybody’s role in it.”

“I can’t go into it assuming that Bucky has any motivation to hurt Kat, either,” Steve says, louder this time. 

“Then maybe you don’t need to go into it,” Nat says calmly. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Steve asks.

“It means you stay on the sidelines for this one, for now anyway,” Nat says. She folds her hands in front of her, resting them on the table top. Her face is closed off, a mask that looks like Natasha.

“No,” Steve says. “No way. Nat, I need to be out there. I need to be the one going after these guys. I’m the one taking care of Kat, and it’s my job to—”

“Exactly,” Sam interrupts. “You’re the one taking care of her, which was your call, by the way. I was there when we found her, same as you, and it could’ve been me who took her in. I’m a competent adult. I’m completely capable of looking after a kid.”

“Sam, I know that, but I couldn’t ask you to be responsible for her,” Steve says.

Sam shakes his head. “No, you _wouldn’t_ ask, because you knew you were the one that needed to do it. You knew she’d probably been through some pretty rough stuff with Hydra, which you know a little about, and you knew there was a good chance she was like you and Barnes. You put yourself in charge of her well-being, and rightly so. She needs you to be here. She needs to know you’re not going anywhere. That’s the thing you’re doing for her right now. That’s your job.”

“You can’t just bench me because of that!” Steve insists. 

“We can, and we did,” Nat says. “We discussed it before you got here, that we’d wait to see how you reacted to seeing the schematics. If you could separate the situation from your emotions, you were in, and if you couldn’t…” She shrugs, the smallest lift of her shoulders, somehow making the movement seem apologetic. 

“So I failed a test I didn’t even know I was taking? That’s just great,” Steve says. “Barton, you’ve been quiet. You have anything to add to this?”

Barton hems and haws for a few seconds before he looks Steve right in the eyes. “We can do our job without you. Kat can’t.”

“That's not fair, playing her like some kind of trump card,” Steve says.

“This isn't about fair, Steve,” Sam says, and now Sam’s got the pitying look on his face. Steve’s sick up to here with the pity and the condescension from his team members, like they all think Bucky and Kat are liabilities. 

“No!” Steve says, slamming both his hands onto the table as he stands. The 3d schematic flickers and then disappears. “This is my team, too. You don't get to shut me out!”

The discussion goes off the rails after that. Sam and Steve shout at each other, Barton signs and shouts simultaneously, Nat sits there with folded hands and blank face, and nothing gets accomplished in terms of planning or resolving the issue of Steve’s involvement. Bucky and Kat probably hear the whole thing, because by the time Steve finally says “Enough!” and ushers them out the door and across the hall to their own apartment, Bucky has that stray-cat look that suggests he won't be there in the morning.

Bucky keeps it together long enough for the two of them to tuck a jittery Kat into bed. Steve goes into the bathroom then, ostensibly to brush his teeth, but really to give Bucky a chance to flee without observation. Sure enough, when Steve emerges from the bathroom, Bucky is gone. 

Steve forces himself to believe it's a matter of self preservation, that Bucky doesn't still have some Hydra handler to report to, and that nothing hypothesized about him across the hall is true. Steve wants to be right about Bucky. That feels a little harder to do tonight. As much as Steve loves Bucky—and it’s much, it’s everything, really—when the thing at stake is Kat’s safety, trust doesn't come so easy, not beyond Sam and Nat, whom Steve trusts completely. Even Barton is up for debate, comparatively speaking, though Steve thinks Barton has his own loyalty for Kat to keep him on target. They're probably right, all of them sickeningly and painfully right, to keep Steve out of it, but he’s not going back across the hall to admit that now.

Steve gets into bed and eventually falls into a light, nightmare-laden sleep. He awakens to the sound of small feet shuffling down the hallway, his cracked door swinging open.

“Cap?” Kat’s sleepy voice says, tremulous and small. “My friend leave.”

“Yeah, I know,” Steve tells her. He pats the big, empty space on the other side of the bed. “You want to bunk in here with me?”

“I want,” Kat agrees, scurrying into the room and up into Steve's bed, promptly taking up the entire empty side. 

“He’ll come back. He always comes back,” Steve says, hoping to reassure her.

“He should not go,” Kat grumbles, grumpy-sounding now. She curls up on her side, facing Steve, inching closer as she burrows deeper into the blankets until only her face and the top of her head is visible. He tries not to jump when tiny, cold toes dig into his right calf; he mostly succeeds.

Steve sighs softly. “I wish he would stay, too, but I want him to feel safe. He needs to know he can come and go as he wants. He has to feel like he’s free to do that.”

“Because he is adult person, not rank of kid?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He rolls towards Kat, letting her icy toes resettle against his shins. “Nobody shouldn't try to force him to do something he doesn't want.”

“He should want to stay,” Kat says fiercely. “Not go.”

“Maybe he'll be back in the morning,” Steve says.

“Maybes,” Kat concedes grudgingly. 

“He always comes back, Kat.”

“He should not go. _You_ do not go.” 

Steve sighs. He doesn’t go, because Kat needs him to stay, which is exactly what Sam was telling him earlier. “That’s right,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere, but things were different for Bucky than for me. I had a whole team when I woke up. I had people to help me.”

“My friend have me,” Kat says. “Sometimes he remembers.”

“He’s trying, Kat. He’s doing the best he can,” Steve says. Kat screws her face up into a scowl.

“He should try more hard,” she says. 

“Get some sleep, okay?” Steve tells her, closing his eyes. He can hear her grumbling to herself in that way she does, when she knows Steve can hear her but will pretend he doesn't. He lies there, still and quiet, until the grumbles die down, replaced by her shallow, even breathing. He sleeps then, only then, once he’s sure she's fully asleep herself.

When Steve wakes in the morning, Kat isn't there. That in and of itself isn't too strange, as she's definitely a morning person—an early bird, he remembers his mom calling people like that, people healthier than him, who could wake early and jump out of bed without any aches or pains—but he doesn't hear the television. He gets up, rubbing his eyes as he checks her room, which is empty. The living room is also empty, and at that point Steve starts to panic, flying into the kitchen. No Kat, just an empty cereal bowl in the sink.

“Kat?” Steve calls out. “Kat?” When she doesn't answer, he shouts, “Jarvis, what’s Kat’s twenty?”

“She's up on the private lab floor, Captain. All is well,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says.

“I thought we agreed you’d notify me if she left the apartment!” Steve says. He hurries to his room and starts pulling on something decent enough to walk around the building wearing.

“She apprised me of her intended destination, and I deemed it unnecessary to wake you. I apologize for any distress I may have caused you, Captain.”

“In the future, I don't care what she says or where she wants to go, you tell me if she leaves this apartment,” Steve says. He heads to the elevator, hitting the up button hard enough that the plastic creaks in protest.

“Of course, Captain,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says apologetically.

“Who is she with?” Steve asks as the elevator climbs too slowly. 

“Mister Stark, Captain.”

“He doesn't even like kids. Is Pepper there, too?”

“Miss Potts is currently in Amsterdam for a conference,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says. Great. No Pepper, plus Tony Stark and Kat unsupervised in a lab, can only equal a headache for Steve.

When Steve reaches the floor for Stark’s private lab, the first thing he hears is laughter: Kat’s, with the little snort at the end, and Stark’s half-out-of-breath cackle. As Steve gets closer to the lab, he realizes the laughter is punctuating a rapid-fire conversation in a mix of English, Hungarian, and J.A.R.V.I.S.’s translations. Steve rounds the corner into the lab to find Stark perched on a stool at one of several large worktables, with Kat seated on that same table between mechanical parts and drafting diagrams. She’s still dressed in her Mighty Girl Squad nightgown, her pale, thin legs hanging over the table’s edge and swinging as she kicks her feet. 

Stark scribbles something onto a tablet in front of him, which he tilts up to show Kat, who nods excitedly. She pokes at the tablet, and a projected 3d rendering springs to life in the empty space above Stark's table. The rendering looks like a shield, shaped differently from Steve's and seemingly scaled down. As if to confirm that, Kat sticks her arm into the image, gripping at the virtual straps of the shield. It fits her arm perfectly, and the shield itself looks like just the right size to protect Kat's center mass when sitting or standing. Crouching, she could probably fit her entire body behind it. She looks up from the virtual shield and sees Steve. She beams at him.

“Look!” Kat declares, moving her arm and, with it, the shield. “For me! Tony will make.”

Steve forces a smile onto his face just in time for Stark to whip around on his stool. “That’s great, Kat,” Steve says. “You left the apartment without telling me where you were going, though. I got worried.”

“I wake up and think, today I need _taktikai eszköz_.” She pauses while J.A.R.V.I.S. translates, and then carefully repeats his translation, “Tac-ti-cal gear. I go find Tony, and I say, ‘Tony, you make’.” 

“Yeah, you did,” Stark says enthusiastically. He looks just this side of manic, his eyes wide and bloodshot with deep shadows under them. Steve wonders if Stark had slept since Pepper left for Amsterdam, whenever that was, and as if confirming Steve’s suspicions, Stark adds, “Anyway, I needed a little project to keep me busy.”

“And arming the kid was what you came up with?” Steve asks, pitching his voice low. Kat doesn't seem particularly concerned with Steve’s opinion, however, moving her arm around with the projected shield still attached. 

“The shield was her idea. All I did was pitch a few examples, different sizes, shapes, and—hey, kid, show the old man what you can do!”

Kat immediately stands and dives off the table into a roll. As the projected shield hits the ground, it pivots and rotates on its straps, blocking nearly all of Kat’s body as she tumbles and bounces around the room. Part of Steve is horrified at the idea of Kat ever having to spend another minute in a combat zone, but another part of him really wants to see what she can do.

“Incoming!” Stark yells, and virtual projectiles start streaking through the lab. Kat deflects them easily with the shield, then begins actively leaping for them and batting them out of the air. She hits the last one with a strong backhand, the shield sending it directly at Stark. It fizzles out into static just before it hits him.

Kat pops up onto her feet, grinning widely, her hair flying all around her hair like a halo. She barely seems out of breath.

“You watch me?” she asks Steve. “I am _very_ much proficient!”

“You are,” Steve agrees, smiling back at her despite his reservations about the whole Kat-with-tactical-gear thing.

“I keep?” Kat asks Stark.

“That one won't work outside the lab,” Stark says, “but I’ll start working on a prototype and get it to you by, say, two? Two-thirty?”

Kat tilts her head in consideration before nodding. “Yes. Prototypes by two is acceptable parameters.”

“One prototype,” Stark says, holding up his right index finger. “One. Uno.”

“Prototypes,” Kat repeats, continuing to nod her head and smile at Stark.

“She knows exactly what I’m saying, doesn't she?” Starks asks out of the corner of his mouth.

“Oh yeah, you bet,” Steve says. “I guess we'll see you at two.”

Kat opens her hand, the virtual shield dissolving. “Also, you bring lo mein,” she says to Stark as she walk past him, taking her self-appointment tactical position behind Steve and nodding for him to proceed.

“Your kid’s a tyrant, Cap!” Stark shouts after them.

“Yeah, she takes after Barton,” Steve calls back.


	6. Steve Rogers: Confirmed Sucker

Kat takes up her unofficial position at Steve’s six, but that doesn't prevent him talking to her as they head into the elevator.

“Tony, huh?” Steve asks, trying to sound noncommittal, like it's normal to wake up and find your adopted super soldier kid missing, only to have her turn up in Tony Stark’s lab designing tactical gear.

“Yes,” Kat says as she presses the button for their floor. “I like.”

“Stark or the tech?” Steve asks wryly. Kat cocks her head to the side, confused puppy, until J.A.R.V.I.S. translates ‘tech’ for her.

“Yes. I like,” Kat repeats.

“I guess he's not so bad,” Steve concedes. “I knew his father. Hell of an inventor, but probably not so much in the way of—”

“Yes. Tony say.”

“He told you I knew his father?” Steve asks. “He’s usually kinda touchy about that.”

“He tell,” Kat says. “Tony say, Cap know my father. He say, _he_ know you, so is much same.”

Steve’s face gets a little warm. “He said that him knowing me was like me knowing Howard?”

Kat frowns and glances up at the ceiling waiting for a translation that doesn't come. “I do not know what is ‘Howard’,” she finally admits.

“Howard Stark. He was Tony’s dad. His father.”

“Ah,” Kat says solemnly. “Tony thinks you are Howard for me.”

Steve immediately finds himself stumbling over himself to correct her, tripping on his words. “No, no, Kat, ‘Howard’ doesn't mean ‘father’, Howard was Tony’s—”

“Yes. I get.” Kat looks even more solemn now, her small red eyebrows drawn together.

“I didn't mean it like that, Kat, okay? Kiddo, of course I’m looking after you like that, you're—well, if I had a kid, you’re just what I’d want.” Every word he says feels wrong, Kat’s serious face deepening and darkening. “Geez, Kat. C’mon. You're _my_ kid, okay? But I’m not like Howard Stark. I can't imagine having Howard Stark for a father. Nothing was ever more important to Howard than the science of it all. The discovery.”

Steve can hear J.A.R.V.I.S. quietly translating, and he watches Kat’s face relax as she nods. Steve puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes gently.

“I get,” Kat says again. “You are _apa_ for me now?”

J.A.R.V.I.S. helpfully translates this as ‘father’, and Steve vigorously nods his agreement as the elevator doors open.

“That's right. If you want me to be. If you’ll have me.”

Kat gives it a second’s consideration while stepping from the elevator. “Yes. I like. You can be _apa_ for me, and I be _lánya_ for you.” J.A.R.V.I.S. translates that as ‘daughter’.

“That's right,” Steve tells Kat. “I can be your father, and you can be my daughter.”

Kat beams at him, following him into their apartment. “Yes. Good mission. And my friend, he is Howard.”

“No, Kat, your friend is…” Steve trails off when he realizes what Kat is really saying. “Yeah, I guess Bucky kinda is, in a way. The dad that puts the mission first.”

“Howard that is gone,” Kat agrees.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, feeling that old, familiar weight on his heart.

“But he come back,” Kat says.

“I hope so,” Steve says. “Every time, I hope so.”

“Good,” Kat says. “Now it is time for waffle.”

Steve’s internal clock suggests now is time for another hour or two of sleep, but Kat looks so excited about waffles, so he sighs and says, “Then I guess you better get out the waffle iron, kiddo.”

They make waffles while Kat keeps up a steady narrative about her new tactical gear, and how useful the shield is, and how proficient she can now be. Steve doesn’t try to argue with her about any of that or try to explain that he isn’t keen to bring a child on a mission with him, regardless of her level of proficiency. Instead, he hands her the butter to slather onto her stack of waffles, then the bottle of real maple syrup to drown the waffles in. By the time their breakfast is done, the kitchen is covered in flour and sticky handprints, but Steve’s panic level is back down to its usual post-Kat-in-his-life simmer and Kat seems content.

Steve directs Kat into the shower to de-syrup herself while he cleans the kitchen. As per the usual, his mind wanders while he goes about the simple routines of washing and drying dishes, wiping countertops and tabletop. He thinks about Kat and Bucky’s strange closeness, Kat and Clint’s camaraderie, Kat and Tony’s shared love of making something, Kat and Natasha’s cautious and cat-like circling of each other, Kat and himself as something resembling parent and child—so many different relationships with their own dynamics, some easy, some less so, but they’ve all shifted to accept and accommodate Kat’s new place in Steve’s life. Nobody’s suggesting Kat would be better off somewhere else, in the care of someone who knows a little bit more about the proper care and instruction of a child in the 21st century. 

At least, Steve notes wryly as he puts away the waffle iron, he’s fairly certain she’s getting enough to eat. 

When Kat finally emerges from the shower, followed by a billow of steam, she’s in the same sticky nightgown she had on before the shower. Steve looks at it and then raises an eyebrow at her. She looks down at her nightgown and then raises an eyebrow back at him in challenge.

“Clean clothes after a shower, Kat,” Steve says. “Not a dirty nightgown.”

“I like,” Kat says, squaring her shoulders.

“Clean _daytime_ clothes, please,” he says, pointing towards her bedroom. Kat gives him the stinkeye and doesn’t say anything, but she does go into her room, returning a couple of minutes later in jeggings and the most hideous Iron Man shirt Steve has ever seen, Tony’s enormous, helmeted head splayed across the entire front. Steve isn’t even sure how that particular monstrosity made its way into Kat’s drawers.

“Clean,” Kat says. She puts her hands on her hips like she’s waiting for Steve to argue, but he nods at her.

“Get your brush, then, and we’ll untangle that hair a little,” he says. Now that her hair has a little shaping to it, she doesn’t mind Steve brushing it, and he enjoys how much more eager she is to talk while her back is to him, animatedly signing and talking in a mix of languages as she describes what Steve thinks might be her ideal strategy for knife holster positioning. When she can’t see Steve’s small flinches at the subject matter, she’s much more expansive. 

“...and in each boot, like... _zseb_ ,” Kat finishes, making a downward sliding gesture with her right hand. 

“Pocket?” Steve asks.

“In boot.”

“A... boot pocket?”

“For knives,” she explains, nodding. “In boots.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “I don’t know that I can get anything like that in your size here.”

“Tony make.”

“Tony makes a lot of stuff, but not boots,” Steve says. “Besides, aren’t those light up sneakers Sam got you pretty cool?”

Kat’s face purses in thought for a beat before she nods. “Yes. Pretty cool sneaker.”

“Sam’s a pretty cool guy,” Steve says.

“Yes. Pretty cool Sam,” Kat agrees in a tone that suggests that it’s obvious that Sam is cool, and that she’s onto Steve’s subject-change act. “Time for prototypes?”

“Sorry, Kat, but your shower didn’t take up that much time,” Steve say. He twists one little lock of Kat’s hair around his right index finger so that when he releases it, it falls across her round forehead in a ringlet. She looks up at him, scowling half-heartedly, and looking so painfully like Natasha for a moment that Steve almost— _almost_ —considers having that talk with Nat.

“Dog Cop?” Kat asks.

“Maybe a book,” Steve counters.

“Book is haaaaard,” Kat complains. “All English. Oh, too bad.”

“Don’t feed me that line,” Steve says. “First of all, you’ve got the whole set of the Hungarian editions of Harry Potter in there right next to the English ones.”

“But no picture,” Kat complains even harder.

“ _Some_ pictures,” Steve says.

“ _You_ read English Potter book for me,” Kat complains hardest of all. “Make voices. All voices, so much.”

Steve sighs, because they both know he’s going to read to her and do all the voices now. “Alright, alright! Uncle!” he says to her, gently nudging her back to her feet.

“No uncle. Only _apa_ ,” Kat says firmly.

“I am such a sucker,” Steve says, mostly to himself, since Kat is already halfway into her room to get the book. Still, it’s a good way to kill an hour or two, Steve reading a few chapters of the second Harry Potter book aloud to Kat, who has no problem providing her critique of Steve’s character voices or demanding that he change one to sound “more soft, a sneaking sound” or another to be “less small, more _grrr_ ,” complete with a realistic growl. His voice doesn’t get tired or scratchy these days, at least not from something as low-strain as reading, and even if it did, Kat’s laughter and strong opinions about the incompetence of Gilderoy Lockhart (“He is not proficient! Teacher must be proficient!”) would make it worthwhile. 

Steve reads for so long that by the time he’s convincing Kat to leave the next chapter for bedtime, he’s interrupted by a polite “Pardon me, Captain Rogers” from J.A.R.V.I.S.

“What can I do for you, Jarvis?” Steve asks.

“Mister Stark request that you and Miss Kat join him on the private lab floor.”

“My prototypes!” Kat squeals in excitement. 

A few hours of relative normalcy, and Steve had managed to completely forget it was just a stall tactic while they waited for Stark to make equipment for Kat, who is still, despite Harry Potter and waffles and obnoxious t-shirts, a child soldier with years of experience. 

He manages to squash a sigh before it can bubble out of him, and replies to J.A.R.V.I.S. “Let him know we’re on our way up.”


End file.
